


Wash Away the Change

by AndTheMeltdowns



Category: Protean City Comics (Podcast)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 15:20:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14595906
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndTheMeltdowns/pseuds/AndTheMeltdowns
Summary: A city maintenance work reflects on his time working in Protean City and grumbles a little.





	Wash Away the Change

“Fucking Banksy”

The Maintenance man grumbled to himself and pumped the canister of solvent. Every art school drop out or punk kid with enough money to buy themselves a can of spray paint and a bandana had started defacing some part of the city. Maybe it was just his imagination but it seems like they’ve been more active. He’d gone through almost four times as many cans of solvent in the last month as he’d normally go through in a year. “Fucking Banksy” he said again out loud. 

It wasn’t hard work. The remover did most of the work for him. In fact it was the kind of work he enjoyed best. It got him out of the usual places and up into the city. The solvent did wonders on dirt too. As much as he hated whoever had done this, it did give him an excuse to clean up an old building. The kind of work he enjoyed. Not just maintaining but improving a little. It seemed that more and more in recent years that administration didn’t want them spending time cleaning up these old buildings. 

“They’ll just be destroyed” or “Modern buildings self clean” they would say. As though that were a sufficient excuse to cut his pay and let these grand old buildings degrade. With that mindset it was a small wonder they hadn’t just torn them all down themselves. What absolute nonsense! This part of Protean City was just as much a part of the city as any other. Why shouldn’t he want to keep it looking nice? 

As he waited for the chemicals to do their work he stepped back and looked up at the brick building in front of him. It was a beautiful old building of the sort that didn’t really get built anymore these days. Where was he again? 62nd and Richardson, he checked the street sign.. It was rare that he’d make it this far downtown. It was impossible to know what this building had been made for, but it was of the old style. All brick and stone. From back when they thought buildings would last. This one had, it’s bold arches and bold reliefs. The kind of building that made you stop and look at it. 

His grandfather had told him the old stories of the first rebuilds. At first it hadn’t been bad. The heroes cared and the villains didn’t have the gall to blow things up this close to city center. As the rebranding happened, when the old city died, buildings of this style started to show up in the place of the buildings destroyed. He had grown up loving their designs. Believing in the rebuild. 

This one in particular had phenomenal curves that pulled your eyes away from the corners and toward the chevrons in the center. The designed suggested, no dared, you to look up. Up into the sky. Over the years it had worn off, but a design like this would have been painted gold. It was architecture of people with hope. It captured the spirit of the people and the hope that if you just looked up at the blue sky you might see a hero fly past, cape billowing behind them. There was a way you could do that with brick that just didn’t translate to whatever new age metals they were using these days. 

He’d heard that there was a fresh crispness to the air back then. Heroes and were heroes and they fought to make the city better. That was before the Silver age. Before everything went downhill. Gone were the days where you might hope that man or woman in a mask or cape might show up and stop the mugger from taking your groceries. 

Heroes begot villains. Villains required more powerful heroes who almost demanded more dangerous villains. The cycle continued for a generation, spiraling upward and onward. Hope in a brighter future became terror for today. Vigilantes in costumes weren’t some bonus of good luck, they were a necessity. The powered arms race fed into itself and people like him, the people who had to pick up after it all were the ones who lost. 

The Maintenance man reached out and placed a hand on the warm brick. He let it’s grit dig into the calluses on his hands. This baby was lead lined and titanium reinforced. Even it would’ve gone down to one of the Inspector’s ray blasts. His grandfather’s generation had done what they could to build a city of change. ‘The City of Tomorrow, Today’ the signs had all read. On their best day they never could have imagined the horrors that would come with that tomorrow. 

The Maintenance man hadn’t grown up in his grandfather’s time. He hadn’t lived during “Golden Age of Heroics.” When he was a boy heroes like The Striped Eagle and The Bronze Cobra had woken up to the darkness that had started to grow in the city. His grandfather had gotten to read stories of Valiants Day and The Day With No Crime.

What had he gotten to read about?

He got to open his newspaper and read about the Hottest Day when F.A.L.C.O.N. came to down Crackdown took to the steps of city hall and beat the ever loving shit out of a woman who was once the city’s greatest hero. That about summed up the kinds of heroes his generation got. 

At least he’d gotten to hear stories though. It was a miracle kids these days even knew what a mask was. Supers were people who fight each other off in the distance or up in the sky. They didn’t taint themselves coming down to the street where people actually lived. At least it meant that buildings like these got a fighting chance to stand for a few more years. Sure there were some cowboys out in the BASH who tried to do some good but the BASH was its own story.

Who should be surprised that a generation that didn’t know wouldn’t have any respect for what the city stood for. He was supposed to be getting help cleaning up from some teen heros. Just kids in t-shirts with logos pressed on them really. It was supposed to be punishment for bad acting or whatever the Administration wanted to call it. Lack of respect he’d say. It was certainly no surprise when they’d put in all of fifteen minutes of work before skipping off.

Speaking of work, the Maintenance man touched one of the bricks with paint on them and smudged it with his thumb. The solvent had done its work, time for him to do his. He sighed and put aside thoughts of yesteryear. He could take comfort in the knowledge that at least his Grandfather hadn’t lived long enough to see his great city like this. He cracked his knuckles and turned on the hose preparing to wash away the giant block letters that someone had tagged on this glorious old building last night. 

Words that read,

“Blitz is Back”


End file.
